Wednesdays
by TheSummerNightingale
Summary: Eloise Mintumble was a 19th century time-traveler. She was trapped in the 1400s for five days until the Ministry managed to return her to her own time. Eloise died when she returned, taking 25 family lines with her due to her experience in the past. Time itself was also disturbed by Eloise's experience; the hours of a few days were altered after her return. This is Eloise's story.


**Written for Triwizard Tournament, Task 3: Eloise Mintumble**

**All information I've gotten about Eloise Mintumble is from Pottermore and Wikia. Eloise is not an OC. :)**

* * *

It's not true, what they say.

They say that Sunday is the beginning of the week. They say that Sunday is the beginning, Sunday is the fresh start, Sunday is the day to remember because it's the bridge between an end and a beginning.

They say Sunday is the beginning of the week, but it's not.

Wednesday is.

* * *

Madam Eloise Mintumble is a normal twenty-two-year-old woman who has simple brown hair and ordinary brown eyes. She is a remarkably unremarkable woman, save for one thing:

She is spontaneous.

Spontaneity is a good thing in many cases. It was, for example, good in Hogwarts, when she'd use it to surprise her teachers with the most creative answers. It was, for another example, good when she was applying for her job, when she'd used it to charm her boss into accepting her application. It is _not_, however, particularly suited for Eloise's job.

This is because Eloise Mintumble is an Unspeakable, and Unspeakables are supposed to be _anything_ but spontaneous. At any rate, Unspeakables are supposed to be anything but reckless, but on this particular Wednesday, Eloise is being very reckless indeed.

"Mintumble," says her fellow Unspeakable. "Why ever are you getting so close to the Time-Turners?"

Eloise flashes an unremarkable smile at him as she slowly inches towards the shelf of Time Turners. "Have you ever wondered, Robert" - for that is his name - "if time travel was possible for more than a matter of hours?"

Robert Thornton has indeed wondered this before, but he does not say so. "Don't talk about such silly matters. Get back to work."

Eloise touches the tip of her finger to a Time-Turner. "Merlin, Robert, we could discover so many things with these Time Turners." Her eyes widen and sparkle dangerously. "Would you like to help?"

He casts her a wary glance. "With what?" he asks carefully.

"I have an excellent idea." Eloise conspicuously glances around before whispering, "An _experiment_."

Robert does not like the way she fingers the chain of a Time Turner. But he still asks, "What sort?" because he's curious and he's never quite seen Eloise like this before and he's fascinated. (Robert Thornton harbors somewhat of a crush for Eloise Mintumble.)

"Well," says Eloise, nearly jumping for joy, "a time travel experiment. I want to see if I could stay in the past for more than ten hours. A day, perhaps. Two, if it would allow!"

"No!" cries out Robert and he takes a step back. "God, no, Eloise, that's horrible. It's against all rules of being an Unspeakable - it's terrible, no, I won't take part-"

"Come on," says Eloise charmingly. "It'll be alright. I'm sure it won't be any different than going back a couple hours, and I've done that loads of times."

"No, it's too dangerous, I won't allow it, I'll tell Pemberson-"

Alan Pemberson is the Head of the Department of Mysteries. Needless to say, Eloise's eyes widen and she tugs on Thornton's robes.

"Please," she begs. "It won't be too dangerous, will it? I'll even go back in time before I was born, so I really can't mess it up-"

"I'm not going to allow it! It's too dangerous. Come on, let us go back to ordering files." He gently pulls her arm, but sees Eloise holding a Time Turner between two fingers. "No - Mintumble, put that down - don't even _think _about it -"

"24 hours, Robert," Eloise says, and her fingers are inching towards the little knob. Her smile is crooked and reckless, and there's a devilish spark in her eye. "I'll try to be back in 24 to 48 hours. I'm going to go back to the beginning of the 15th century. Got that?"

"MINTUMBLE, DON'T YOU DARE-"

But she's already turning the knob back, back, back - since when did she get the chain around her neck? Robert's screaming, trying to make her stay, but he can't touch her or both of them will go back and no one will ever know where they've gone, so he's just screaming, screaming, screaming until Eloise suddenly wavers out of focus and disappears.

He stops his shouts mid-scream. Unspeakables are running over, but he can't answer their questions.

"What happened?"

"Who was that? Mintumble?"

"Thornton, what the hell did you do to her?!"

Robert sinks to the floor and extends a shaky hand across the tiles. His fingers touch gritty sand that sits in an innocent pile on the hard, cold ground. He pinches a few grains and lets them fall to the floor.

He hears murmurs and exclamations as people begin to piece together what has happened, but he doesn't speak. There is nothing to do or say other than to wait.

It is Wednesday morning. It is the longest Wednesday of Robert E. Thornton's life.

(This is because it is his last.)

* * *

Eloise Mintumble doesn't know it, but she lands in 1402 Britain on a Saturday.

She stumbles when she lands, and feels awful, like she's falling down into a hole, as if there is no solid ground beneath her-

"OH MY _MERLIN_!" She shrieks when she discovers that she is not standing on solid ground at all. She is standing in a swamp with disgusting insects crawling over her arms, their bulbous eyes blinking slowly at her.

And she is _sinking_ into the mud.

"Disgusting!" she screeches, whipping out her wand. "Oh, horrible!" With frantic waves of her wand, she manages to keep the wretched bugs off her arms as she pushes herself out of the mud.

It's just about then that the boy shows up.

He's evidently taking a walk through the swamp; why, Eloise can only wonder. He looks familiar with the whole disgusting place, and when he spots her, he stops dead in his tracks and says in wonder,"Who art thou? An angel?"

Eloise is flattered, of course, but she can't speak, because this boy looks remarkably like her co-worker Robert Thornton, whom she slightly fancies.

"The angel does not talk, it seems," says the boy to himself. "Her garments doth be strange." He begins to circle Eloise from a distance. "Speak!" he commands.

"I - I am Eloise," she stutters. _He really _does _look an awful lot like Robert_, she thinks. "I'm not an angel."

She doesn't know what the desired effect is, but it's certainly not the maniacal shriek that comes from the boy. He begins to scream something about God and mercy and the devil, and Eloise can't understand a word he says.

"Please calm yourself," she says shakily. The adrenaline rush of this adventure has already begun to fade a bit, and she finds that she is frightened. Eloise fingers the Time Turner around her neck, her thumb resting on the knob that can take her back home.

She takes a deep breath and realizes what an awful stench this place has. Batting another mosquito off her arm, she comes to the conclusion that 1402 is not a pretty place. "I am Eloise Mintumble. Who are you?"

"The devil is asking my name," mumbles the boy. "I shan't tell him that I am Christopher Thornton, no."

Eloise inhales sharply. Thornton. He, then, _must_ be Robert's ancestor.

"I'm sorry," she says, backing away. Eloise is reckless and Eloise is spontaneous, but even she knows where her limits are, and meeting Robert Thornton's ancestor is one of them. "I must leave. Farewell."

Christopher's head snaps up and his mouth opens wide as Eloise begins to turn the knob on the Time Turner.

"What art thou doing?" he whispers.

Eloise keeps turning the knob. _Can't speak._

"Tell me," he says urgently.

_Can't speak, can't speak, can't speak. _She's twisting the knob faster now.

"What are you doing?!" Christopher exclaims.

Turn, turn, turn. Panic bubbles in Eloise's chest. _It's not working, _she thinks frantically.

"Let mine eyes see that object that lies in your hands!"

Eloise gasps as she reaches the end of the knob. She can't twist it any further, and yet she is still standing in the swamp. Christopher Thornton still stands in front of her, staring at the Time Turner in her hands.

She screams.

Eloise Mintumble is stuck five hundred years before her time.

* * *

Saturday is the day she meets Christopher Thornton, a boy who lives in a magical village. Sunday is when he brings her home to his village, where she meets a whole cluster of people. Monday is when she's forced to work in the fields by the lord of the land because, Christopher explains, the lords rule over the serfs, and the village is composed of serfs. Tuesday is when she falls deathly ill and begins to hallucinate.

Wednesday is when Eloise begins to shift back and forth through time.

It happens at the crack of dawn, just when she is being bustled awake by Christopher's mother.

"Girl! Girl, rise! We must get to the field."

Eloise moans into the thin layer of hay beneath her head. Something terrible boils in her stomach and she groans.

"Girl!"

She turns onto her belly and that's when it happens - she sees the black floor of the Ministry through her half-open lids.

Eloise screams and opens her eyes, but there's only hay and dirt beneath her. No tiles. No Ministry. No home.

She sits up and frantically glances around. "Oh, did you see that?" she rambles to Mrs. Thornton. "Did you see that? Did you see the Ministry?"

Ella Thornton seems very annoyed at her. "No. Now hurry, girl, or we shan't wait any longer for you."

"But the floor-" Eloise cries, and her hands instinctively find their way to the Time Turner she still wears around her neck.

Mrs. Thornton shudders because even though she's magical and has a wand and everything, she, like her son and great-great-great-great-great-great grandson, is cautious of the unfamiliar.

"Let us depart now, quickly," she snaps, and Eloise stumbles out of the shack that the Thorntons call home.

When she steps on the dirt path, a terrible dizziness hits her head. Eloise trips over nothing and falls towards the ground. Expecting rocks to dig into her skin, it comes as a large surprise when she hits a _bed_. She knows it's one because she can feel it and the pillow beneath her. Voices are but a murmur overhead, but she can make out a few words: "Mintumble", "mysteries", and "time".

And then she's back on the ground, looking at the bare feet of the Thornton family.

"Come on, silly girl," says Mrs. Thornton, pulling on Eloise's shirt. "No time to diddle."

"Y-yes," murmurs Eloise, but when she tries to push herself off the ground, she finds that she can't move.

She attempts to jerk her hands from where they are pressed against the rocky ground, but they don't budge. Similarly, she can't turn her head, which is facing the dirt. She tries to move her lips to speak, but no sound escapes.

She suddenly becomes very aware of the fact that the world is silent. Mrs. Thornton's voice is gone. There are no rustles of the wind. No footsteps. No sound at all, and Eloise realizes that she's not in 1402 anymore. She's someplace where colors blur and people move in and out of focus, and the floor keeps on changing from rock to soil to stone to concrete to tiles and back again.

It hits her that she cannot breathe when she tries to open her mouth to scream. Screaming, after all, can make you feel better. Screaming when afraid lets you know that you are still alive.

Eloise can't scream, and can't breathe, and therefore doesn't know if she's alive or dead.

Millenniums or seconds later, her finger twitches of its own accord.

She watches it out of the corner of her eye. To her alarm, it begins to _wrinkle_.

She can't scream. She can't breathe. She can't tear her eyes away from the flesh that sags and wrinkles against her bones, spreading from her fingers to her arms to her shoulders to her torso to her head to her legs to her toes. She can't do anything but watch as the years age her until she's utterly unrecognizable.

And suddenly, Eloise can breathe. She can breathe, and she knows she's on a bed because she can feel it and the pillow beneath her. She can breathe, and smells the faint smell of St. Mungo's. She can breathe, and she can hear the sounds of Healers above her. She can breathe.

But it's only for a second.

Madam Eloise Mintumble dies on a Wednesday in St. Mungo's, her wrinkled body reduced to almost nothing but pale, plain, unremarkable dust. She doesn't know it, but she takes 25 families with her to her grave. (It's not a coincidence that there were 25 people in the 1402 village she stayed in.)

* * *

So you see, then, that everything does not begin on a Sunday for Eloise Mintumble. Her life is not confined to the days of the week, to the perfect squares on a perfect calendar that is supposed to dictate when and where beginnings and ends fall. So you see, then, that everything does not begin where people say it does.

Everything begins on a Wednesday for Eloise Mintumble. But everything ends on a Wednesday for her as well.


End file.
